Tower Garden Party Love

So this evening I was able to further my education and learn even more about the Tower Garden! How can you not love learning more from those who are already using an aeroponic vertical growing tower? One of the people who did the party showed the growth on her tower and I was so excited tos ee it!

This is a fabulous list! I love being able to pull it up and see all the different types of fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers you can grow on your Tower Garden!

Tower Garden is designed to last a lifetime. Most people who own one talk about how it pays for itself over time. The vertical garden is going to cost less than to invest in than all of the tools needed to have a traditional garden at your home. Plus when you are growing your own produce it means spending less on your grocery bill.

The one thing I would think when I would look at the overall cost was that it was so expensive. One of the awesome things that they offer though is that you can make monthly payments! Not only is that a great thing in itself but they also go as far as not charging a cent for interest! So you are already saving so much because you have your vertical garden and are saving on a grocery bill! Then add no interest! I can’t help but get excited.

One of the most positive things that I heard being talked about was, “how cost effective it is! No longer is my family “throwing away” money in the form of spoiled produce. We can eat off of one head of lettuce for months, simply by trimming off only what we need to eat in one sitting and letting the plant keep growing.”

[Just for clarification the “initial investment” this info-graphic is referring to is of a Tower Garden with the extension kit on it. So this one is growing 28 plants and not 20 in the standard Tower Garden]

I have definitely been guilty of throwing fruits and veggies away. Since you can not grow root or tree fruit and veggies there is still a chance I will throw some things away. At the same time to save so much on the other things! I can eat lettuce and peppers and cucumbers like they are going out of style!

Now this next part isn’t going to make you very happy. Well at least it didn’t make me very happy. Actually it made me really sad to learn these facts. I had a general idea of some of it but not the complete truth.

So lettuce see how much you know about store bought fruits and veggies:

What do you think is the average age of the lettuce you purchased at the grocery store (not at the farm)?

1-4 days

1-4 weeks

2-10 days

2-10 weeks

Go on and take a guess…

But before I take the time to reveal the answer let us talk about important facts about getting the nutrients you need from your fresh foods.

Lettuce is best harvested in warm weather, but this is also when demand for salad peaks, resulting in shortages. Weather forecasts are used to predict surges in demand – but if these are wrong, the lettuces may be refrigerated for several days. In the US, lettuce for shipping abroad is refrigerated for anything up to 4 weeks.
Lettuce for salad packs is cut, washed in cold water, dried by centrifuge and mixed with other leaves. It may be treated with a chlorine-based compound, antioxidant or preservative to prolong shelf life. It is placed in ‘pillow packs’, or Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP), in which levels of O2 and CO2 have been altered to slow deterioration. Then it is stored.
Typically, lettuce is sold in supermarkets 3-4 days after PACKING, which can be extended to 10 days.

Our produce, or at least the nutrition in our produce, is vanishing!
As farmers try to grow bigger produce at a faster rate to meet the market demands, the result is a weaker and less nutrient dense product. Additionally, most of our produce is picked “green” and shipped miles and miles to our grocery stores. Tomatoes, for example are picked when they are green and sprayed with ethylene gas to force them to turn red. This is why grocery store tomatoes are lacking in flavor (as well as nutrients).

Did you know that 90% of the nutrients humans benefit from develop in the LAST TWO DAYS before the vegetables fully ripen? Picking veggies early to allow time for shipping, etc. is depleting the nutrition that they are supposed to have. Artificial methods to change the color of the produce makes is LOOK like they are ripe when actually many times they are not

The correct answer to the question above is 1-4 weeks.

Again there are other benefits that go with a vertical garden: like no soil = no weeding!

If anyone recalls when I talked about the Tower Garden before, knows how much I dislike gardening with dirt!

Tonight I learned a bunch of new things about the foods I am buying in the stores. It really does make a lot of sense now why nothing tastes like it did back when I would pick fresh fruits and veggies from Grandma’s garden. It really does make a lot of sense now why if I cut into a tomato that is red and pretty on the outside that it can be yellow on the inside.

The more I learn, the more I hear, the more I read, the more I am thankful for the path I am heading down. I am not be the best at everything I do (and I am okay with that) but I am following a path that is good, healthy, and teaching my children and family the importance of being self sufficient, gardening, and fresh fruits and veggies and what they do for our bodies!

In the party tonight I shared this, “I think this will be a huge help to have foods that taste good. I know what real fresh foods taste like and I grew up loving fruits and veggies. My youngest two are not huge fans and their complaint is always about the taste! I do think this would help because we did a small dirt garden this summer and Jack David fell in love with cucumbers! He has always taken a bite and spit it out before.” It all goes along with what I learned tonight.

What would you give to be able to provide for your family and not have to worry about what was used to grow your fresh foods? That is completely discounting the fact that the foods we purchase that we think are fresh really are not fresh. It is time to get us back to simplicity for what we can and this is just one more way I can help my family!

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